Winter Song
by dancerindisguise
Summary: This is my winter song, December never felt so long. Emily leaves something for Hotch. H/P, slightly AU, post-Minimal Loss. Based on the song by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson.


**Here we are, some H/P goodness. Christmas is just the best time ever, isn't it? Have fun and review once you get to the end!**

**Disclaimer: I'm getting all of it for Christmas. Or not. Winter Song belongs to... Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles, I guess. And Hotch and Emily belong to CBS. Poo. They're all on top of my Christmas wishlist anyway.**

* * *

He stared at the package lying innocently upon his desk, amidst the piles of paperwork that perpetually adorned the woodwork. It was wrapped simply with a red ribbon, curled at the edges and, even in the stillness, imbued with a joyful bounciness that reminded him of her. Pasted carefully between the curves of the bow—a testament to the woman's slightly OCD tendencies that he filed away for further reference—he found a note. It looked like it had been scrawled haphazardly, and he was no Reid, but he could almost swear that she had made it look like that on purpose, just to make him think she didn't care.

_Track 7 is the best. —E_.

It was snowing outside as he clutched the CD close to his chest and braved the icy petals that quickly drove their way down his pea coat, his hands fumbling for his car keys. He put the CD in the player as soon as he managed to start the car, skipping over the first few tracks until the soft piano melody began to drift over the sound system of his car.

_This is my winter song to you.  
The storm is coming soon,  
it rolls in from the sea._

He found it kind of ironic, in a way. This was them, a sad tune filled with mellow lyrics and yet, a burgeoning crest of hope. He wished he hadn't screwed it up, that day after Colorado.

He had been concerned at first, when he rang the doorbell to her apartment. She had opened the door teary-eyed and skittish, her free hand clutching at a vodka bottle tightly, and she had offered some to him. Though he knew it was against everything that he had believed in, he had accepted. Then one thing had led to another, and soon they were there, together, in her bed.

The next morning had been awkward, just like the month after that, and after that too. They had worked together in a professional capacity, but whatever friendship there had been between them had all but shrivelled up and died.

_My voice; a beacon in the night.  
My words will be your light,  
to carry you to me._

He wanted to tell her that she wasn't a mistake, that he didn't regret doing what they had done. He wanted to hear her laugh like she had laughed that day—to see the way her eyes shined with mirth.

Their thing—he would say fling, but it was more than a fling to him, now—was just so screwed up that it was hard to recognize it for what it was. Yet he knew what he wanted to do, what he wished he could do.

He set his car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, his mind all the while focused on that image of her laughing happily, albeit drunk. "Hi," she drawled lazily at him in his mind's eye, trading her Ambassador's Daughter accent for a softer, more Midwestern one that he assumed she had gotten from Chicago. It was a more Emily voice, he thought. Definitely more Emily than SSA Prentiss, the same way the voice she used in the field didn't fit with the woman who loved chocolate and her teammates.

_Is love alive?  
Is love alive?  
Is love_

He thought briefly about heading over to her place, balanced the pros and cons as he usually did. There were a multitude of reasons why he should, and yet those reasons seemed to always be tantamount to the reasons why he shouldn't. As he drove down the empty highway—one of the perks of being a workaholic—he knew he was subconsciously profiling himself. He knew that he was attempting to stack the odds in favour of going there, yet his conscious mind reiterated, 'superior and subordinate, superior and subordinate, superior and subordinate' to him, over and over again.

He hated that he could let his better reasoning best his feelings, the ones that had been brewing within him for so long, the ones that till that day he had managed to stuff in a tightly sealed jar, the ones that had, on that fateful day, sprung out of their confines and taken her with a vigour and longing that was more than he had felt in a long time.

_They say that things just cannot grow  
beneath the winter snow,  
or so I have been told._

But despite all those mixed—though they could hardly be considered mixed—feelings, he longed to have the courage to walk up to her door and tell her exactly how he felt, because he knew that it was how she felt too. He knew that the reason why she was trying to avoid him now was almost the same one that he had used to keep himself distanced from her the year after she had joined the BAU—that if he kept his distance, that those feelings that had brewed and churned in his heart would miraculously dissipate.

But they didn't.

They refused to die, growing instead, spurred on by the individual titbits of personality that he had learnt about her—her love for chocolate and fervent hatred of Skittles; Vonnegut.

And sometimes he despised that about himself, the way that he had failed to stop loving Emily Prentiss. And there it was, he had finally admitted it to himself. He had finally gotten to the root of his addiction, to the very pit of his problem.

_They say we're buried far,  
just like a distant star  
I simply cannot hold._

Now what? He found himself somehow threading his way past rows of parked cars, somehow drawn in the wrong direction by nothing except his own volition. He hadn't even realised it, but now the rows of apartments started to look familiar.

A mere five minutes later he was parked outside her house. He realised now that it was snowing, that the faint flakes of heaven had begun to weave down the dark sky. He remained rooted in his seat, his eyes shifting heavenward, tracing the path of the tiny strands of snow. He knew what he had to do now; he could hear her in his head, her eyes smiling, the way she would fiddle with her fingers.

He could see her silhouette from the window. She was watching the lights again. He steeled himself, resisting the urge to just stay in the car and watch her.

_Is love alive?  
Is love alive?  
Is love alive?_

He felt a battle being waged within him as he trudged from his car to her door. His heart pounded in his chest, his sweaty fingers rubbed against the lint in his neatly pressed pants. He hadn't been this nervous since the first time he had gone out with Hayley.

They had agreed that it was a one-time thing, that they had both been drunk. That it wasn't going to happen again. It was a decision that he had thought best not to intervene against at the time, thinking that it was what she wanted. Was it, though? From the way she seemed to sneak glances at him whenever she thought he wasn't looking… he wondered why he had been too cowardly to just tell her outright then that it hadn't been a mistake.

He knew that it was what he wanted now.

And each step took him that much closer to what he needed to do.

_This is my winter song.  
December never felt so wrong,  
'__cause you're not where you belong;  
inside my arms._

He didn't even know that he had knocked until the door opened "Hi." He could see his reflection in her chocolate eyes, surprised and apologetic as she opened the door further to let him in.

"Hi." She offered him an M&M from the packet she was clutching. Her voice was just as he had imagined it would be, and he found himself clinging to the CD case more tightly than he knew he was.

He tilted his head, words momentarily forgetting themselves as brown met brown. "Track seven _is_ the best," he murmured, stepping within the boundaries of her hallway.

She smiled.

_Is love alive?  
Is love alive?  
Is love alive?_


End file.
